We’ve all been there. That first house meeting with our German flatmates when the topic of cleaning comes up. How many of you were left wracking your brains at what on earth these dirty Klobrille (toilet glasses) could be?

While you might at first guess that this is some strange device Germans use to help inspect every inch of the toilet bowl, it actually just means loo seat. Don’t worry, Germans aren’t that fussy about cleanliness!

4. Stinktier – Stink animal

This one is beautifully blunt and gives you the impression that, when it came to naming animals in Germany, kids get to do it rather than scientists.

What’s that animal that smells bad? A skunk you say? But isn’t stink animal so much more accurate?

That thing that’s like a snail but hasn’t got a shell… yeah the one English people call a slug. Let’s call that a naked snail (Nacktschnecke).

And the one that spends the whole day eating – the wolverine – let’s name that the eat-a-lot (Vielfraß).

5. Eselsbrücke – donkey’s bridge

Photo: DPA

The meaning of the word “donkey’s bridge” certainly isn’t obvious, but it’s a lot more approachable than our word for it – “a mnemonic device”. What a mouthful.

A mnemonic device is just a trick you invent to help you remember something. The German actually comes from the Latin term “pons asinorum” (bridge of donkeys) that refers to a point that people find hard to remember.

6. Donnerbalken – thunder beam

The word Donnerbalken is surely one that makes any of us too young to have done military service rue the day it was abolished. Originally the term was for a communal military latrine, but it is now often used in slang to refer to the toilet.

Literally thunder beam, it’s close to the English slang term “thunderbox”. It doesn’t need much explaining – “beam” refers to the seat-like bar, and the “thunder” you can probably figure out for yourselves.

7. Durchfall – through fall

Another scatological one, and one which leaves little to the imagination. It means diarrhoea, and translates as “through-fall”.

You might recoil in disgust, but then what does “diarrhoea” mean? It comes from the Greek, and it also means to “through-flow”. So, we Anglophones aren’t much better, but we just don’t know our own language very well.

8. Wildpinkler – wild pee-er

A Wildpinkler at Ulm Minster. Photo: DPA

Let’s flush down one more toilet-related word. In fact, this one describes someone who avoids the toilet. Literally a “wild-pee-er”, a Wildpinkler is someone who likes to relieve themselves outside.

So, maybe you should find a Klobrille or at least a Donnerbalken next time nature calls.

9. Dudelsack – yodel sack

English has also gone for a literal one here. But bagpipes is an awfully diplomatic description for a bag that emits a seemingly random sequence of twiddly sounds while a stocky Scot goes red in the face.

Germans cut to the chase and named the instrument the Dudelsack, which means the bag that tootles or yodels.

The “silent newsagent” is a rather beautiful way of describing those racks with newspapers you find outside train stations.

The English language doesn’t have an equivalent word, but it’s pretty similar to the English term “dumb waiter”. That is the little lift for food you sometimes see in restaurants if the kitchen is on a different floor to the dining room.

In German the dumb waiter is known as a Speiseaufzug (dish-lift), so maybe English should adopt the “dumb newsagent” and German the “Stumme Diener” (dumb waiter).